Dillwyn Medal for Social Sciences 2026: Dr Hana D’Souza

Dr Hana D’Souza has won the Learned Society of Wales’s Dillwyn Medal for Social Sciences, in recognition of her work supporting and advocating for children with neurodevelopment conditions. 

Hana is a developmental psychologist at Cardiff University who uses her research to challenge negative accounts of such conditions, especially Down syndrome. She leads the interdisciplinary research group, Cardiff Babylab, which brings together psychology, computational methods, engineering and clinical practice to explore how attentional and motor skills in young children affect learning in everyday settings. 

One of the key outcomes is the TinyExplorer Ecosystem, a head-mounted camera and open-source analytical tool, that is used to gather and process data about the everyday lived experience of young children with and without Down syndrome. 

Hana’s research is driven by a desire to improve the autonomy, inclusion and belonging of children with neurodevelopmental conditions, and has had important impacts on policy work around the rights of children and young people. 

Her research has been presented at the Senedd and has contributed to Children in Wales’s Pledge for Babies in Wales and Public Health Wales’s First 1000 Days initiative.